Hungary's 'Son of Saul' wins Oscar for best foreign language film

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Hungarian movie “Son of Saul,” a harrowing Holocaust drama, won the Oscar on Sunday for best foreign language film.

Laszlo Nemes, director of Hungary's Best Foreign Language Film nominee "Son of Saul," arrives with guest at the 88th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 28, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

It was Hungarian-French director László Nemes’ first full-length film and had been seen as the Oscar favorite after winning a Golden Globe and taking the second-highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Even in the darkest hours of mankind, there might be a voice within us that allows us to remain human,” Nemes said on stage. “That’s the hope of this film.”

The film’s title character is an inmate at the Auschwitz concentration camp who risks his life to attempt a proper Jewish burial for a boy he believes is his son.

Hungarian-born Nemes, 39, comes from a family that lost relatives in the Holocaust. The director has said he felt the immediacy and visceral nature of “Son of Saul” was necessary in an age when many people, especially younger generations, see the Holocaust as something from the distant past.

Nemes focused the film on Saul with a continuous series of close shots as he carries out his nightmarish job of herding detainees to their deaths and collecting their bodies for the crematorium, all the while trying to find a way to bury the boy.

Several different languages are spoken in the Hungarian-produced film, reflecting the polyglot nature of the grim world of the World War Two death camps.

Nemes’ parents were opponents of the Communist government that ruled Hungary when he was a child, and he spent his teenage years in France. After studying cinema in Paris, he returned to his native land to begin working in filmmaking.